Thank you so much to everybody who have signed our petition to rename Harney Channel to Cayou Channel!  We are approaching 1,000 signers, many of whom left comments, and we are thrilled by your support.  We are starting to feel fairly confident that our proposal will succeed.
Here is an update on the process: last fall the Washington State Committee on Geographical Names accepted our application requesting their consideration of our proposal (a big step), and on Tuesday, April 26, they will make their final decision whether to actually approve it.
Upon that approval, our proposal will be passed on to a monthly meeting of the State Board of Natural Resources and, upon that board’s approval, it will then move on to the Federal government for consideration by yet another board.  Both the state DNR and the Federal boards meet monthly so it’s conceivable that we may be finished with the renaming approval process as early as late summer!
In talking with people familiar with the renaming process, we have heard that we presented such a strong and effective application for our proposal, and we took such care to document and substantiate everything that we presented about General Harney and Henry Cayou, that it was credible and convincing. 
Again, many thanks to you!  And, by the way, it certainly helps for even more signers to give their support to this petition, so please fe­el free to pass the word along.
 
The photo of the front and back of a card featuring General Harney is from the Indian series of chewing gum distributed in 1933 by the Goudey Corporation.  We don’t know if the incident of Harney flogging an “unruly Indian” is actually true or not, but it does represent racist attitudes that we hope our society is maturing away from.